The advertising tax issue was discussed this afternoon on Fox Business. Shibani Joshi talked about Amazon.com’s war against the various state plans to institute Internet advertising taxes.
The segment was just a few minutes, so it didn’t go too in depth on the issue, and it was mostly about the impact on Amazon.
There was no discussion on the countless affiliates in affected states who are basically being fired from their jobs.
This is very significant, as those affiliates will not only produce less taxable income, but they may well end up on the unemployment line, depending on how much they rely on Amazon and other affiliate programs that drop them.
The segment included a comment from Forrester Research Inc analyst Sucharita Mulpuru…
“It’s a double-edged sword… Affiliates are nice to have but by no stretch of the imagination are they going to make or break Amazon’s Web site.”
Mulpuru further estimated that 10 percent of Amazon’s sales could come from affiliates and included her assumption that much of that could be from “margin-eroding coupon sites” and that “There may be some incrementality but they’re often low-margin orders and there’s a cost associated with it.”
Lots of speculation. It would be nice to see citations behind these comments.
Watch the clip at http://www.foxbusiness.com/search-results/m/23895490/amazon-battles-states-on-sales-taxes.htm.